The Best Sushi in Park Slope is at Taro Sushi

The title of this post is a strong statement, one that requires research. And so, after titling this post “The Best Sushi in Park Slope,” I decided to do the required research: I Googled “best sushi park slope” and guess what came up first? A post I wrote last January (click here) that basically said that the best sushi in Park Slope is at Taro Sushi. What does that mean? I’ve officially jumped the shark–I’m repeating myself. I’ve reached the end of food blogging, there’s nothing left to say.

Well, no, Adam, settle down. Your last post didn’t definitively declare Taro sushi to be the best sushi in Park Slope, you simply said that it was some of the best sushi you’d ever had. But what your readers don’t know is that you had a falling out with Taro. A few months later, I had lunch there and I had some bad sushi. There’s no other way to describe it: I know it sounds strange to say that the fish was too fishy, but that’s how it tasted. Too fishy. It left a bad taste in my mouth, one powerful enough to keep me away for a few months.

Where did I go during my exile from Taro? Why I went to Kiku, another Park Slope sushi joint, and a place that certainly does not have the best sushi in Park Slope. The place is wildly inconsistent: sometimes the sushi is cut so expertly you want to photograph it and hang it on your wall. Other times it’s such a mess that if you traced that sushi on a piece of paper and gave it to a geometry student as a final exam, he’d fail out of school. Yet, despite the inconsistency, Kiku is a very pleasant place to eat. There’s a little flat bowl on a glass table with fish in it; the place feels like a spa. And it was the soothing atmosphere that kept me coming back, not the sushi. In fact, I went to Kiku today for the soothing atmosphere. Not the sushi.

My sad story might end there, but last month I returned to Taro to give it another shot–Craig was with me–and we were blown away. It was lunchtime and the place was packed (always a good sign). We saw the men behind the counter filleting whole fish, also a good sign. And the sushi, like the sushi you see in the above photograph (taken last week), was gorgeous–fresh-tasting and prepared with love. We’ve gone back many times since then, and I’m happy to report that once again Taro sushi is the best sushi in Park Slope. In the category of best spa-like atmosphere to eat sushi, Kiku gets it.

And thus concludes my deeply researched post on the best sushi in Park Slope.